Russian Plane Shot Down Near Syria - Who's At Fault?
Yesterday's Israeli attack on Syria has resulted in the shoot-down of a Russian surveillance plane, perhaps inadvertently by the Syrians. The attack came on the same day as a Russian/Turk agreement on deconfliction in Idlib. Are these related? Will matters escalate?
Yesterday's Israeli attack on Syria has resulted in the shoot-down of a Russian surveillance plane, perhaps inadvertently by the Syrians. The attack came on the same day as a Russian/Turk agreement on deconfliction in Idlib. Are these related? Will matters escalate?
Yesterday's Israeli attack on Syria has resulted in the shoot-down of a Russian surveillance plane, perhaps inadvertently by the Syrians. The attack came on the same day as a Russian/Turk agreement on deconfliction in Idlib. Are these related? Will matters escalate?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host, Daniel.
Good to see you.
How are you this morning, Dr. Paul?
I'm doing very well, and good to be with you here this morning.
Interesting things happening in Syria.
Obviously, we know about it.
A lot of people know about it.
There's a lot on the internet, but nothing on the evening news.
And also, although we think it's significant events occurring in Syria and very dangerous, and hopefully they will be contained, but it hasn't even affected the markets.
The markets are calm and cool, so hopefully we're over-worrying.
But we still, I think it's justifiable to be concerned because there are a lot of different people in Syria, a lot of different things going on.
What is this?
About seven, eight years now they've been trying to get rid of Assad.
We've been involved, and what Israel's involved, Iran's involved, Russia's involved, you know, even the Syrian government is involved, people trying to destroy them.
And then you have how many different groups of radical groups there are?
It has to be quite a few, and everybody's internally fighting there.
And of course, they're fighting for their battles, but they're also being used as pawns for us to fight our battle.
And so everybody has gold.
But the big stuff that happened over the weekend has to do with some bombs being dropped and an attack on an airport.
And then, in what could have been, it looked like a retaliation or what was going on because a Russian plane gets shot down.
And there was a lot of talk about who did what, when.
And right now, it seems like the consensus is that the Syrian government, inadvertently with their weaponry, thinking that they were shooting at Russian aircraft, may well have caused the plane to go down.
But when I think about this and trying to sort it out, I keep thinking about how often have we heard the final conclusion about a gas attack?
Automatically, the plan was blame so-and-so and blame Assad, this sort of thing.
And this may be some of that again, because even with gas attacks, that was one of the things they've anticipated.
And already, our ambassador to the UN already knows who's going to do it and who's to blame.
But let's try to go ahead and sort this out because although there's a little more calm probably this morning, because it seems like the association alliance, so-called alliance between Israel, Netanyahu, and Putin, which to me appears so strange, how could this happen?
How could the Russian planes be shot down and having to do having Israeli planes being involved?
So there's something going on there, but as of now, it looks like it's a little calmer.
But you might just talk a little bit about what might be the precipitating event.
And one of the precipitating events seems to be the agreement between Russia and Turkey to back off and not march in and try to take Italy back, which would have meant many, many thousands of people killed.
It's almost like, and here you spin on this, is how many people are saying that they did, you know, the wise thing to do was to back off.
And it looks almost like some people are disappointed that peace might break out.
Yeah, there is a lot to unpack in this, you know, because it is complicated.
And there are certain things that line up in certain ways.
The Israelis, first of all, the Israelis, again, over the weekend attacked Syria with a bombing run.
They attacked near the Damascus International Airport.
Apparently, they were trying to attack some military equipment that the Iranians have shipped in, at least that's the claim.
By Israel's own admission, they have attacked Syria over 200 times in the last 18 months.
Imagine if that was the U.S. being attacked by a foreign country 200 times.
But then they did another run yesterday, about 10 o'clock local time in Syria.
They sent four F-16s.
This is what I think we pretty much know.
They sent at least four F-16s over to start bombing near Latakia, which is actually close to the Russian air base there.
So of serious concern to the Russians.
Initially, it was thought that the Israelis may have shot down the Russian surveillance aircraft.
It's an Illusion 10 surveillance aircraft with 15 Russian personnel aboard.
It appears now that, well, then the claim from the Russian Ministry of Defense was that the Israelis did a maneuver with their F-16s to sort of mask themselves behind the much larger footprint Illusion so that the Aleutian would take fire and they could escape.
The Israelis have disputed that and said they were already back in Israeli airspace when it was hit.
So the question is, it seems pretty much resolved that a Syrian missile did bring down the plane.
No one is really disputing that now, although, of course, we don't know.
But the Israelis are blaming the Syrians.
It's their own fault.
It's all Syria's fault.
And no one is really asking, well, why does Israel keep bombing Syria?
Ultimately, if you start bombing someone and in the fog of war, something bad happens, you're ultimately to blame because you initiated the aggression.
Yeah, I think the people who are at fault are those who chimed in, Assad has to go.
And of course, we joined that coalition and we motivated that coalition, provided the weapons.
Who built the weapons that Israel's using right now?
I think they were built in the United States.
So we're very much involved.
So overall, the big picture shows the fault is the people who promote war.
Assad didn't go out of his way to declare war against all these factions that are invading his country.
And this means fault is not going to be so easy to say that it's just the stupidity of the Syrians.
But it is somebody who's a real expert in this would have to chime in.
But I think it's a possibility that a large airplane can distort the radar.
And those missiles aren't, they're smart, but they're not super smart and know the difference between what they're locked on.
So that's a job and a half to worry about.
And here's something that's, I don't know the word for it, but the Israel, the IDF, the Israeli Defense Forces, here's what they tweeted earlier.
They blame Syria.
They said the extensive and inaccurate Syrian anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile fire caused the Russian plane to be hit and downed.
Idlib Conflict Dynamics00:05:56
Okay, that may well be true.
They were using the S-200s.
But that doesn't tell the whole story because the Syrians have wanted, and they actually even purchased the S-300s from Russia, which are far more accurate.
The 200s were built in the 60s.
Far more accurate, but the Israelis, Netanyahu personally intervened with Putin and said, please do not deliver these more accurate missiles because it's going to interfere with us bombing Syria.
So it's kind of cheeky, chutzpah, whatever you want to call it, to blame Syria's junkie missiles when you're the one responsible for them having these junkie missiles.
Well, I think that whole alliance with Putin and Netanyahu is so precarious, and I can't see how that lasts, because one of these days one's going to drop.
It might even happen over this incident, maybe that Putin will give up on that.
But Putin seems to be going out of his way if you want to talk about who's the most pragmatic, who's looking for the least amount of violence, at the same time protecting what they think is very much in their self-interest, and that is their alliance and their bases and their agreements with Syria.
And that seems to be, Putin seems to be making more sense there.
But this whole thing about the agreement between Putin and Erdogan, you know, I think that's important because they've agreed in a way, and this whole incident means there's not going to be an invasion for the couple weeks.
Now we say, when are they going to invade?
What are they doing?
They're planning on it.
And they certainly look like it.
And I think the forces that don't like, that don't like Assad wanted it because that would give them an excuse for, you know, the British and the French and the Americans to do a lot more.
Then all war could break out.
But so in a way, what Putin has done is sort of softened that and neutralize is we're going to leave it alone.
We're going to have a zone.
And it's in Turkey's interest to not have a hot war going on here.
And they're going to be the policemen.
Turkey and Russia are going to police this.
So it's demilitarized.
It's sort of a pseudo-truce or a temporary truce, at least, for Nile, and putting it on the back burners.
And hopefully they can work something out and cancel it where they don't have to literally invade with ground troops because that would be one deadly event.
Yeah, it could be, although all that was claimed what happened in Aleppo when it was liberated, it didn't happen.
There weren't the deaths that were claimed.
But you're right, and this is our central theme of what we were trying to discuss today, is that on the same day that the Idlib agreement was announced, the same day, Erdogan flew to Sochi.
They sat down and they talked it over.
Russia and the Syrian government wanted to take back Idlib, which is controlled by the U.S.'s owned admission, is controlled by Al-Qaeda.
They wanted to get Al-Qaeda out of there.
But then you had Nikki Haley and John Bolton and the administration threatening, if you do anything to these guys, we're going to hit you.
You know, don't worry about chemical attack, anything you do.
So this raises the stakes.
So they had a meeting and Erdogan has had about a year to clear Al-Qaeda out of there and he hasn't done a very good job.
He hasn't done anything.
So here's the conflict.
They meet at Sochi and they come up with this agreement, a kind of a compromise where there's a 15-kilometer buffer zone around Idlib, patrolled jointly by the Russians and the Turks.
Civilians in the area will be allowed to leave, at least from the Russian and Turk side, allowed to leave and get out of that region.
And the slow process of confiscating weapons, of demilitarizing that area inside will take place.
So rather than a flashbang of an assault, a frontal assault, it'll be a slower process.
And that did wrong foot the neocons who were just dying for that invasion because that would mean that the U.S. could really hit them hard.
And the fact that it didn't happen, we have to wonder if that had nothing to do with what happened last night with the bombing.
And also, don't forget, Dr. Paul, that the Russians still claim that the French fired a missile from a frigate that it had in the area.
See, I see the opposition to Assad as just trying to justify something they shouldn't be doing.
You know, how are we going to provoke the Russians and the Syrians to do some atrocious act that would justify bringing in the French and Americans and really all have a lot more?
And then they also have how long have they prepared the stage for a false flag and another gas attack.
In a way, that has settled down, but that doesn't mean that's that's still something that probably isn't on the table from their viewpoint.
So hopefully the publicity, the anti-publicity, the bad publicity, will make them stop and think because it seems so outrageous and who's going to believe it.
But I believe that they are capable of still using a gas attack and a false flag and trying to antagonize or have a justification for expanding this war.
Because it looks like it's not going to be very easy, or we shouldn't be, I at least don't anticipate that, oh, in a year or two, the Russians and the Syrians are winning, and eventually maybe they can handle Idlib and take care of that.
But to think about a day in a year or two where Syria has been restored to its natural sovereignty and the territory it's had for a long time, that's probably going to be difficult.
But I can foresee them securing a large segment of it, which would include Idlib.
It seems like it would have to include Idlib.
Yeah, it's a big part of it.
And maybe people will vote for their feet with their feet like they've done in the other way.
But here's something, Dr. Paul, I know this is going to shock you, but just before we went on air, the State Department released its own statement about what happened yesterday.
Foreign Policy's Moral Hazard00:06:46
And among other things, they blame, dot, dot, dot, Iran.
So here's what the State Department: here's what Pompeo said: this event, you know, this bombing, this takedown of the plane, quote, underlines the urgent need to end Iran's provocative transit of dangerous weapons through Syria, which is a threat to the region.
So Iran's fault.
Well, the one point he's making there is absolutely right, and we've made this point before: all this activity is designed to go after Iran.
Now, since the people who hate Iran are on the wrong side of the moral issue of what they have to do and what Iran is responsible for, but that is the big issue.
And that is, you know, blame Iran.
But that's continuous all the time.
I mean, just look at the systematic attack on Iran with the sanctions and the ongoing effort.
Not for a year or two.
Actually, it's been decades that the West, and that is back related once again to Saudi Arabia and Israel.
You know, we're fighting that war for them.
You know, and one of these days, the American people ought to get tired of it all.
You know, I just, you know, people say, well, no, but we keep the peace, we restore peace.
There would be chaos, you know, if we weren't there to bring about peace.
Well, I think that 90% of it over there is because we're interfering and we've been doing it.
And just look at the tragedy of the Middle East, the entire Middle East in the last 15 years, 70 years now.
And it's a reflection, once again, on the thing we always talk about.
It's the fallacy of our interventionist foreign policy where we believe that it is our moral obligation to spread American exceptionalism.
And right now, less and less people around the world think we're exceptional.
They think we're exactly the opposite.
And when you think about what's going on and our fallacies and our shortcomings on foreign policy and combine it with the anger and the hostility that comes from trade sanctions and the fighting with the trade wars, I mean, it is building a case for strong anti-Americanism.
And the ultimate attack will not be with weapons and invasion.
It will be an attack on our dollar because it's a natural thing.
It's a natural thing because the dollar cannot be sustained.
And they can do things to move it along.
And so many times these countries, you know, have attacked the dollar, you know, whether it was Hussein or Gaddafi, and they've outwardly attacked it.
And I wouldn't be surprised if Syria has the same attitude.
Yeah, and you know, unlike a lot of folks who are anti-Israel, critical of Israel, don't like Israel, our position as non-interventionists is that it's not our business to determine what Israel's defense policy is.
The problem is we underwrite, we back, we provoke and promote Israel pursuing a very reckless foreign policy.
Bombing another country 200 times is not a good way to have good friendship.
So just this week, they're expected to finish work on this 10-year, $3.8 billion a year U.S. military assistance to Israel.
We give them all this free military stuff, and then, of course, they use it.
It emboldens them with the implicit backing of the U.S. military as well.
It emboldens them to take steps toward war rather than to look for ways to move toward peace.
So the problem is really not so much, from our perspective as non-interventionists, with what Israel is doing.
It's how we're provoking and how we're causing these kinds of things that are a moral hazard, I guess you'd say.
Well, it seems like it would be more sensible if we were interventionists and we picked and choose and give some people money and weapons and have a policy.
Everybody knew where we stood.
But that's not it.
We give money to both sides.
And, you know, even the humanitarian aid never goes to the people who need it.
It always gets into the war effort.
So all of it is badly spent.
And the real tragedy is that we have squandered our wealth.
We have been a very, very wealthy nation because we've had some very good traits and very strong economics.
So we have so much wealth and a strong currency that we can afford to do this.
But of course, eventually it will come to an end.
And that's when there'll be some realignments.
That's true.
And I guess one thing I would just tell our viewers, thanks for watching the show.
We do try to deal with breaking news.
But also at the Ron Paul Institute, we deal with breaking news.
And I put out a notice to our subscribers last night, basically almost in real time.
I was watching as events unfolded on Twitter and elsewhere.
So we got a lot of the information put together before a lot of the, certainly before the networks did.
So if you're interested in hearing the news before it's reported, subscribe to our updates.
We don't bombard you.
We don't send you too many things.
And we certainly never share your information with anyone.
Just go to RonPaulInstitute.org and click the button that says subscribe and you'll get our updates and hopefully they'll help keep you better informed.
Dr. Paul.
Very good.
Now I want to thank our viewers for tuning in today for this program.
And as usual, the answers to these many problems that we talk about come from our change in the foreign policy that we need.
But there's no serious consideration for this.
Once again, the foreign policy that we have and the many bad policies in government are bipartisan.
So this rant and this demand that we have more bipartisanship, yeah, there's a lot of partisan antagonism and hate and fighting going on.
But the people who control the parties, the deep state and the people who control our economy, our financial system, believe me, they're together on this.
The neoconservatives are in charge.
They're in charge not only of our foreign policy, but our fiscal policy as well as what goes on at the Federal Reserve.
They're very, very powerful.
So eventually, someday, we have to design an understanding to say the purpose of government is very, very simple.
It's to protect liberty and to mind our own business by doing so.
And that would be the reason why we could work toward peace and prosperity in a much better way than believing that more intervention, more money, more bombs, and more sanctions is the road to go.
I think that is not the right way to go.
That is dangerous.
I want to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.